Harvest time, pumpkin pickers and GCSE results

In this episode Emily explains how the pumpkin harvest is operating at the pumpkin patch at Foxes Farm Produce in Colchester, Essex.  It's harvest time on the farm for the pumpkins and the pickers are in the fields picking the pumpkins.  Emily then explains what it is like to load the pallets, inspect the pumpkins for quality and there is even an opportunity to hear Emily interview John one of the pumpkin pickers.

www.foxesfarmproduce.co.uk

Transcript

 Episode 2 – The Pumpkin Patch Mum

Emily French Foxes Farm Produce www.foxesfarmproduce.co.uk

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the pumpkin patch. Mum, this is a heartwarming and down to Earth podcast where we dive into the vibrant, busy and sometimes messy life of me and mum who also happens to be a passionate pumpkin farmer. Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Pumpkin Patch. So in this episode, I'm going to be talking to you all about things. Harvest. It's a busy time of year on the farm. It's exciting and there's loads to do, and it's also come right in the middle of the summer holidays. So as you can appreciate, it's also a busy time for being a mum. It's harvest day and I've come to the field to check and see what everyone's getting up to and how we're getting. On with harvest. So today we're harvesting our wholesale crop. Now our wholesale crop is the crop that we sell across the country throughout the UK to other garden centres, other pumpkin patches. Anyone who really sells and buys pumpkins. So as you can probably hear and they're behind me, I've got lots of noise of tractors and. All sorts going on, so it's a really busy, fun day on the farm. Harvest is really the most exciting thing we do on the farm. It's really when you see all your efforts of the whole year from planting and nurturing and looking after it all comes into fruition and we get to see how our crops. Done. So today I've got one of our pumpkin pickers here. He's going to talk to you about what they do when they're pumpkin picking in the field. So who have I got here?

Join student from Essex.

OK, perfect. John. And is it your first year? Pumpkin picking here, isn't it?

First, Joe, we're excited.

And are you enjoying? It.

Oh, it's amazing. Good company, good conversations, amazing people to work. With can compete. Complain.

And did you know that pumpkins were pitched like this, or did you think it would have been maybe with a machine? Or did you even think about pumpkins before this pumpkin harvest?

I did have a bit of experience picking up not pumpkins in particular, but other random vegetables. My parents are farmers, so I did have slight understanding, but not to this degree of how pumpkins exactly effects. This has been quite a an interesting endeavour.

And do you like pumpkins? Do you cook with them, do you?

Carve with them. Well, we have them seasonally back home. Yeah, I quite enjoyed them. We have our own special recipes appearing that are not quite as common here, but well, I do enjoy them.

Perfect. Thank you very much. So one of the jobs that we're doing at the moment, as you can hear it, is load the trainer full of pallets, which we are currently taking down to the field where they're going to be harvesting our pumpkins into our cardboard boxes. So for our wholesale crop, we get. All of our. Kings gets delivered via cardboard octavians, so they are affected. Massive cardboard boxes. And they are delivered. They are stacked. Rather they are made on pallets and then they are delivered across the UK. So one of the jobs before the men start in the morning is to load the trailer full of the pallets and take it down to the field so that when they get there in the morning. Hey, Preston, we've got planets and some other boys can get straight on to making. The Octagon boxes, so that's what's going on at the moment. Today is one of those days where you logistically have to be on it all the time. So we started the day and there was rain, so we had to go into. To the wooden potato boxes because they can get wet. It's not a big problem, and now this afternoon the rain has subsided, so we're moving back onto cardboard now. What that meant is this morning we had everything ready and the barns. Everything in the sheds. As soon as it was kind of like, go, go, go. We. Can move from one to the other. But what that does mean is I'm just coming out of the field just to check that the. Right. Pumpkins being put in. The right boxes and what have you. So let's see how the boys are getting in. Today is GCSE day, so my niece has just got her exam results, which is really exciting. So being a pumpkin patch mum means I'm also lucky enough to be a pumpkin patch aunty and we are a little family orientated business here so I've just passed my father-in-law. In the JCB and he is doing some loading. The pumpkins for me today. So let's see what everyone's doing. So yeah, my father-in-law is loading pumpkins from the field onto the trailer and then storing them in the relevant areas that we know which priority is which, so that when it comes to spelling, I know how many I've got of each size and each variety. Ohh windy today, as you can probably hear. So. They're just finishing off the last box for one variety. For me, they've done quite well today. Last year, as you might remember, the weather was awful in August, so we had hardly any sunlight hours. Now that had a real impact on us as pumpkin farmer. Because whilst we normally harvest when the when the weather's good in terms of no rain that we can get on the fields with the tractors, we can also then use the cardboard and that is how we primarily harvest because it is a manual job. So because of the the, the lack of sunlight out last year, it meant that the pumpkins. Weren't getting up vital with some sunshine right at the end of their growing season, so they literally were not turning orange. So I remember, you know, my husband and I had many sleepless nights wondering whether the pumpkins are gonna turn orange.